Authoritarian dynamics and unethical decision making: high social dominance orientation leaders and high right-wing authoritarianism followers

When dilemmas require trade-offs between profits and ethics, do leaders high in social dominance orientation (SDO) and followers high in right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) make decisions that are more unethical than those made by others? This issue was explored in 4 studies with female participants performing managerial role-playing tasks. First, dyads comprising a person who was either low or high in SDO and a person who was either low or high in RWA negotiated for a leadership position. People high in SDO were more likely to obtain leader positions than to obtain follower positions. No other effects were significant. Second, leaders high in SDO partnered with an agreeable (confederate) follower made decisions that were more unethical than those of leaders low in SDO. Third, followers high in RWA were more acquiescent to and supportive of an unethical (confederate) leader than were followers low in RWA. Fourth, high SDO leader-high RWA follower dyads made decisions that were more unethical than those made in role-reversed dyads because leaders had more influence. Implications of these results for conceptualizing SDO, RWA, and authoritarian dynamics are discussed.     

‘You Wouldn’t have Your Granny Using Them’: Drawing Boundaries Between Acceptable and Unacceptable Applications of Civil Drones

Some industry and policy actors are concerned about public opposition to civil drones, in particular because of their association with military drones. However, very little is understood about public reactions to the technology. Strategies to ‘manage public acceptance’ have so far relied upon several untested assumptions. We conducted public engagement activities to explore citizens’ visions of civil drones. Several insights counteracted the prevailing assumptions. Rejecting the notion of blanket support for or opposition to civil drones, we found that citizens make nuanced decisions about the acceptability of civil drones depending upon the purpose of the flight and the actors involved. The results are positioned in support for calls to strengthen the role of citizens in civil drone development and, in particular, to shift away from the current focus on citizens’ acceptance of civil drone development towards the development of civil drones that are acceptable to citizens.     

Impact of negation salience and cognitive resources on negation during attitude formation

Because of the increased cognitive resources required to process negations, past research has shown that explicit attitude measures are more sensitive to negations than implicit attitude measures. The current work demonstrated that the differential impact of negations on implicit and explicit attitude measures was moderated by (a) the extent to which the negation was made salient and (b) the amount of cognitive resources available during attitude formation. When negations were less visually salient, explicit but not implicit attitude measures reflected the intended valence of the negations. When negations were more visually salient, both explicit and implicit attitude measures reflected the intended valence of the negations, but only when perceivers had ample cognitive resources during encoding. Competing models of negation processing, schema-plus-tag and fusion, were examined to determine how negation salience impacts the processing of negations.     

Treatment of Childhood Obesity: A Systematic Review

Childhood obesity trends have increased dramatically over the past three decade’s. The purpose of this quantitative systematic review is to provide an update of the evidence, illustrating the efficacy of childhood obesity treatment, considering whether treatment fidelity has been measured and/or reported and whether this related to the treatment effect size. Searches revealed 61 relevant articles published from January 2000 to 2009, including both randomized and non-randomized controlled trials of childhood and adolescent obesity treatment interventions. The review identified scant measurement and reporting of issues around treatment fidelity, an increase in the number of interventions outside of the US, (particularly across Europe) and an emergence of studies involving older children and adolescents in a range of settings. Interventions comprising a dietary, exercise, and behavioral component, supported by family involvement and delivered by trained interventionists in specialized or supervised settings, appeared to offer a potentially effective treatment for obesity. However, concern remains over study quality (particularly sample size), dropout rates and study design. Variations in outcome measures and intervention designs means generalizable conclusions cannot be easily be made. Of greater concern is the lack of consideration for treatment fidelity, which has implications for the transfer of knowledge and the reliability of interventions. Conclusions from the review include; the need for increased accuracy of reporting and objective measurement of treatment fidelity; the need for further investigation of potential cost-effective treatment options (including maintenance strategies to enhance sustainability of current interventions); and an increase in the number of longitudinal trials beyond 1?year in duration.     

Putting theory of mind in its place: psychological explanations of the socio-emotional-communicative impairments in autistic spectrum disorder

In this review, the history of the theory of mind (ToM) theory of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is outlined (in which ToM is indexed by success on false belief tasks), and the explanatory power and psychological causes of impaired ToM in ASD are critically discussed. It is concluded that impaired ToM by itself has only limited explanatory power, but that explorations of the psychological precursors of impaired ToM have been fruitful in increasing understanding of mindreading impairments in ASD (where 'mindreading' refers those abilities that underlie triadic interaction as well as ToM). It is argued that early explanations of impaired mindreading are untenable for various reasons, but that impairments of dyadic interaction in ASD that could lead to impaired ability to represent others' mental states may be the critical psychological cause, or causes, of impaired ToM. The complexity of causal routes to impaired ToM is emphasized.     

Evaluating the effectiveness of REBOOT Combat Recovery: A faith-based combat trauma resiliency program

Evidence-based intervention programs attuned to the spiritual needs of service members, Veterans, and their families are needed to help them deal with the potentially debilitating consequences of combat trauma. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a faith-based, peer-led combat trauma resiliency program called REBOOT Combat Recovery. Participants were 254 adults who reported on 8 aspects of physical, mental, and social well-being during the 3rd week and the 12th week of the program. Findings indicated improvement for pain interference, fatigue, sleep disturbance, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and social participation. Improvement was uniform except that Veterans benefited more than currently serving military personnel with respect to anxiety symptoms. These results suggest the program may be effective for coping with the aftermath of combat trauma.     

Reasons for withdrawing belief in vivid autobiographical memories

Previous studies have shown that many people hold personal memories for events that they no longer believe occurred. This study examines the reasons that people provide for choosing to reduce autobiographical belief in vividly recollected autobiographical memories. A body of non-believed memories provided by 374 individuals was reviewed to develop a qualitatively derived categorisation system. The final scheme consisted of 8 major categories (in descending order of mention): social feedback, event plausibility, alternative attributions, general memory beliefs, internal event features, consistency with external evidence, views of self/others, personal motivation and numerous sub-categories. Independent raters coded the reports and judged the primary reason that each person provided for withdrawing belief. The nature of each category, frequency of category endorsement, category overlap and phenomenological ratings are presented, following which links to related literature and implications are discussed. This study documents that a wide variety of recollective and non-recollective sources of information influence decision-making about the occurrence of autobiographical events.     

Identity Construction,Self Perceptions,and Criminal Behavior of Incarcerated Women

Using symbolic interactionism and labeling as theoretical frameworks, identity status formation has been studied primarily with students in school environments, and very little is known about how people in other situations perceive themselves. This research examined how 104 young women convicted of felony offenses viewed their personal and social identities, and explored whether previous criminal behavior predicted how women saw themselves at this point in their lives. Having a prior conviction and being involved in drug use and sales predicted the likelihood that women would see themselves as criminals, but property crime did not. Implications of the findings were discussed.